Barry Cohen was a 40 something Princeton grad who had grown up with a working class father. He had fantasized about what would make the perfect life: wealth, an attractive accomplished wife and three perfect children. As the head of a once successful hedge fund, he had the wealth even though the Feds were breathing down his neck about financial misconduct. His wife Seema was a younger, beautiful, first generation Indian American who had a successful legal career when he met her. She had left her job after their son was born. The boy, Shiva, was an attractive 3 year old child who was on the low end of the autistic spectrum. Shiva did not speak, look anyone in the eye and was afraid of being touched. Seema kept the diagnosis from family and friends.

One night Barry and Seema were at dinner with neighbors when the neighbors’ precocious 3 year old son performed a song for the guests. Then, after the husband, mentioned that he was writing a book about wealthy hedge fund owners, Seema informed them that “people in finance have no imagination. They have no soul.”

Barry was very upset and that night decided to leave his life in NY, pack up some treasured watches and take a Greyhound bus to visit Layla, his old Princeton girl friend who now lived in Texas. Along the way Barry threw away first his cell phone and then his credit cards. He pictured himself a modern day Jack Kerouac and the trip his own version of On the Road.

He decided to live the same impoverished life that all the others on the various buses he took. Barry first visited Layla’s parents in Richmond, VA. Then he spent a few days in Atlanta at the spectacular home of a former employee. Some of the people he met on the trip were Javon, a black boy who he wanted to empower and Brooklyn, a young woman who wanted to leave her Southern family and move to a big city.

Meanwhile Seema was back in NY with Shiva and his nanny, his therapists and the personal chef. Her life was centered around the difficult job of caring for Shiva. She and Luis, the author neighbor, began an affair and eventually Luis’ doctor-wife, Juliana, befriended Seema.

When Barry finally arrived in El Paso, he found Layla, a divorced but bitter college professor and her introverted son. Barry bonded with the boy and helped him overcome some of his social problems. However Barry could not repair his relationship with Layla. So he stole her debit card and continued traveling to California to see his father’s grave.

The majority of the novel takes place before and right after the 2016 presidential election. The author captured the sadness and frustration of the folks who were Hillary supporters and then worried that America would never recover from Trump’s presidency.

Barry had been a socially maladjusted child who worked hard to make friends in middle and high school. As a result, many in the NY finance scene considered him the friendliest person on the street. Eventually Barry’s luck worked in his favor even though he was not able to repair his marriage.

This is the first book I have read by this author. I enjoyed his writing style and hope to read some of his other works in the near future.

I had a little trouble with this one. While I enjoyed Shteyngart's writing, I wasn't able to get invested in the story or the characters, particularly Barry and Seema, who I found to be extremely unlikable and irredeemable. The way they behave when their son is diagnosed with autism immediately turned me off from them, and i couldn't come around to two miserable people in a bad relationship who engage in selfish behavior (him up and leaving the family, she carrying on an affair with a married man). I thought parts of this were comparable to Andrew Geer's LESS, so if you liked that book, you may want to check out this one. The writing is good, but if you have trouble reading about horrible people doing horrible things, you might want to skip it.

I'm not sure I've ever read a book that I was 5 seconds from giving up on about halfway through, but then went on to finish. This is the tale of that book. It actually became more interesting in the second half, and, honestly, I think a reader could have easily experienced everything you're supposed to experience (unless the author would like some boredom with a touch of, "Why am I bothering with this when there are so many books to be read?") without at least the first third of the book. Or it could have been edited down to better convey that this guy, Barry, is a neurotic obnoxious white-color criminal jerk, and his wife, Seema, is a distraught 29-year-old mother of a "shamefully" autistic 3-year-old who hates her husband but not his money. That's essentially the gist, but it tries to make a go of the "episodic Hemingway-esque lead male character" story, which I just don't generally enjoy. I did not like the characters, and reading a tale of their lives did not redeem them in any way. I'm honestly not sure what the point was. But I did finish it, so there's that.

Ah, Gary...no one manages equal-opportunity offensiveness quite like you. I love the title so, so much. The book itself made me cringe repeatedly, but for the vast majority of it, I was all in. I should know by now that some readers just cannot wrap their heads around unlikable characters, but I'm not one of them. Honestly, if I were reading about hedge fund billionaires who *weren't* despicable, I'd be worried! I did find myself looking forward to the sections narrated by Seema and set in Manhattan. The Greyhound ride and Middle America bits were of less interest. Does that suggest that I'm just like the unreformed, unrepentant Barry? Hmm.

I tried, I really tried but ultimately this just wasn't for me. I put it down (well, closed the Kindle) twice and then picked it up a third time when the reviews began to appear in the major press. Regrettably, I still feel like the odd person out. Barry is just loathsome in an overly privileged unselfaware way. I had a lot of sympathy for Seema for having been married to him and because she's the one caring for their autistic son but then she's not that great of a person either. The writing does zing and it does read quickly - in a rush. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I suspect this one is going to be a love it or hate it experience. The literary critics clearly love it and you might too.

This is a very different book from Shteyngart's past writing, in my opinion. I've always considered him to be a humorist and this novel had some humorous moments, but was also heart rending and deeply moving. I enjoyed the novel thoroughly, following Barry Cohen on his cross country bus trip of self-discovery following the collapse of his Wall Street hedge fund firm. The characters, both principal and those Barry encounters on his journey, are beautifully written and thoroughly relatable. A great read.

REVIEW
The old cliche "money can't buy you happiness" comes to mind when reading this novel by Gary Shteyngart. Barry Cohen is a millionaire hedge fund manager. He is also a deeply, deeply flawed human being. He's not the most likable narrator, but he is a compelling one, as he boards a Greyhound bus to take a cross-country trip in search of his college sweetheart - and a different life. None of the characters in this book are particularly altruistic, but they shine a light on the flaws and vices we currently see in American culture. This is an odyssey for modern times - bereft of sentimentality and difficult to read at times. Still, it is brilliant in its raw moments. Readers who dislike this book should ask themselves if the problem they have is with the literature or the culture.

PRAISE
“This is a novel that seems to have been created in real time, reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute. As I read Lake Success, I barked with laughter, at the same time wincing in pain. Gary Shteyngart has held up a mirror to American culture that is so accurate, and so devastating, that it makes you want to break the mirror right over your own head. I mean this as a good thing. The novel is stupendous.”—Elizabeth Gilbert

AUTHOR
GARY SHTEYNGART is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. His memoir, Little Failure, was named one of the best books of 2014 by more than 45 publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure, and many others.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

4 stars.*

This book reminded me of books and movies I adored in college where the main characters did frantic, thoughtless things in rapid succession. But they had such lovable personalities that you couldn't help but like them despite their despicable behavior. Of course, my brain is like a sieve and I'm unable to grasp even a single movie title or character name. It also reminded me a little bit of The Corrections, which I incidentally didn't like at all.

But this book I did like. Lake Success is the story of Barry Cohen, a modern-day Gordon Gecko, faced with the reality of his autistic toddler son, his failing hedgefund, the government coming after him for insider trading, and ultimately his lack of "imagination" (as decreed by his wife). It is also the story of his wife Seema, although her story seems to be told as a way to support Barry's.

Barry is a narcissist, which should make him utterly unlikable. After an evening spent with neighbors in thier posh Manhattan high-rise, where a particularly drunk and poorly behaved Barry insults the neighbors and his wife, he returns to their apartment and attempts to "bond" with their son. With disastrous results. Drunk, bloodied, and deeply confused, Barry escapes to the Greyhound bus depot and embarks upon a cross-country adventure.

Stragely, despite all of his glaring character flaws and complete lack of self-realization, I found myself both rooting for him and invested in discovering what would become of him.

This is the first book by Gary Shteyngart that I have read and I will definitely be reading more. He tells a rich and vivid story with exaggerated, flawed, yet lovable characters.

When I finished reading Lake Success, I was ambivalent, almost confused, about my own reaction. The writing is brilliant, the research is dead-on, the satire is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
At the time, there were 62 Goodreads reviewers who earlier had posted their reactions to Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel. I read them all, and somehow I agreed with every one of them.

Yes, the characters are shallow, self-absorbed and unlikable. Yes, this may have been the best read of 2018 so far. Yes, there’s a price tag attached to each object and an ethnicity to each person. And all the relationships involve not so much relating as reacting one stereotype to another.

At the center of the story is Barry, a man whose flaws so perfectly match the times that he has become immensely wealthy. Barry has many quirks, chiefly that he cannot empathize with anyone, including his wife, the daughter of immigrants, or his son, with a diagnosis of autism. He has to practice his “social moves” in front of a mirror to gauge his effect on others, and everyone he meets symbolizes something else.

No wonder so many reviewers called out Shteyngart on the “caricatures” he created – we are seeing them through Barry’s eyes, and his point of view is limited and stilted. Barry’s cross-country Greyhound odyssey is heroic and pathetic by turns.

If a book could be described as a comic social commentator with a flat affect, that book would be Lake Success. (I received an ARC through NetGalley).

As always, Gary Shteyngart crafts an entertaining novel that is hard to put down. This time it is about a shady hedge fund manager whose marriage is falling apart as he and his wife try to navigate their issues with each other, their differing cultural backgrounds, and raising their autistic son. For the most part, they spend the story apart from each other, as Barry (hedge fund manager) travels on a Greyhound on a soul-searching mission and Sheema tries raising their son and mentally breaks herself from Barry. Though not Shteyngart's best (Super Sad True Love Story, in my opinion), this is definitely worth a read as the characters are, at the same time sympathetic and deserving of your severe dislike.

3.5 stars
Let me start off by saying the main character, Barry, is a total and complete asshole. If you don’t like books where you dislike the main characters, this is one to steer clear of. Barry, to me, was fingers on the blackboard grating. I mean, what is it with the bloody watches? This is someone you want to feel something for, in a positive way, but I couldn’t. His son is on the severe end of the autism spectrum. All those dreams of a normal family have gone away. He’s incapable of even telling people his son isn’t normal. And he’s an investor in the mold of Martin Shrekeli, making money off other people’s problems.

I had mixed feelings about this book. There are some great points made, some thoughts that I totally understood. “But Shiva would be a permanent immigrant. His encounters with the world would always contain the unexpected. Even his young mother’s love would need subtitles.” But I struggled with it. It’s like the author was trying to have a private joke between himself and the reader about a rich guy trying to leave his life behind to go find himself but still couldn’t jettison the outward accoutrements of that life. I knew when it was attempting to be humorous, but I didn’t find it funny. More pathetic. This is bitter humor. Although I did find the epilogue humorous, especially when it pertains to folks believing he had learned his lesson. That reminded me all to much of those banks that gave Trump loan after loan despite all his bankruptcies.

I am definitely in the minority in not loving this one. But that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate it. I found myself thinking about it. A lot. And it definitely grew on me as it went on.

My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

I don't quite know what this novel wants to say about ourselves and our times, but I can say that my Kindle told me I was 44% of the way through the book (about 145 pages) before I looked up from this novel and said “Why I am actually concerned about the fate of all these loathsome people?” I think that is a sign that this book can be read for the sheer love of good story-telling, no matter what you think about the book's characters, or its message. I also laughed sometimes, which redeems almost any other fault a book might have, in my sight.

I say this because I noticed that someone wrote here that she couldn't read this book because the main character abandons this autistic son (that's absolutely true, he does), which is a behavior so repellent that she could not bear to continue. I think that abandoning books simply because the hero engages in non-admirable behavior means that you are going to deprive yourself of the company of a lot of great stories, which is your loss, really. However, I also sympathize with the person who says, in effect, if I wanted to spend a long time in the company of repulsively selfish behavior, it'd turn on the news.

In any event, this book starts off at a great gallop and continues that way for quite a way, so I didn't fret too much about whether or not it was supposed to be to the Trump era what Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities was to the Reagan era, or alternately a book whose message is: “If F. Scott Fitzgerald were alive today, he'd turn over in his grave.” Both of those are possible readings.

Like Wolfe's Sherman McCoy, Barry Cohen is an inexplicably big deal in the investment world, even though we, the reader, can see he is a dolt. I give the author some credit for not giving into a Wolfe-like hidden sympathy for either his rich knucklehead hero or his wife, who turns out to be almost Barry's equal in the production of grievance and self-regard. Brand-names-as-social-identifiers, which I also associate with Wolfe, come hot and heavy throughout the book, especially brands of watches, about which Barry has quite a lot to say (usually himself in his interior monologues).

As for Fitzgerald, the hero also waxes nostalgic about reading same, before and while attending Princeton in his long-ago youth, but I think the difference between the two books can be adequately summarized by contrasting the following quotes:

Gatsby: “Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

Lake Success: “All I know is I never had any advantages. I wasn’t even lucky enough to be born to immigrant parents.”

A satirical detail I enjoyed: Baltimore (the first city that Barry takes to on the lam) being overrun by German tourists eager to photograph scenes of urban degradation they've seen on the TV series The Wire.

Finally, I want to discuss something that is the most spoilery spoiler of all, dealing as it does with the absolutely final sentence of the novel. You have been warned. [Toward the end of the book, the hero acquires the nickname “Bird Daddy.” The final line of this novel is: “And the Bird Daddy watched over all of it, satisfied with the remains of the world, before he, too, picked himself up, washed the oil and dirt off his steady hands, closed up his light-filled mausoleum, and flew home for good.” I said to myself: I guess that means he died. I consulted the Long-Suffering Wife, and she confirmed that this was probably what the writer intended to say. I ask: why not say so? The rest of the novel has been pleasant free of incomprehensible flourishes, why go all goopy in the last sentence? For example, when the author wants to let you know that Barry is getting off a bus, he writes something like “Barry got off the bus.” I guess just saying “He died” is considered insufficiently profound, but it seems like, my whole reading life, I've been looking up from the end of novels and saying, “Did he just croak, or I am once again missing something that is painfully obvious to everybody else?” (hide spoiler)]

I received a free electronic advance review copy of this book via Netgalley and Penguin Random House.

Another great offering from Gary Shteyngart. Lake Success is an interesting, engaging story (though found it hard to identify with the character's ginormous wealth...) Almost makes you want to take a prolonged greyhound bus trip. Almost.

Vibrantly written with typical Shteyngart panache. His characters frequently hover on the brink of caricature but there’s alway s a touch of pathos that renders them more like flesh-and-blood creations. The prose is consistently lively and the humor built-into the narrative keeps the reading lively. Recommended.

Reminiscent of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Lake Success is a smart, funny & insightful take on love, parenting, politics, money, sex, and nostalgia. I tore through it.

An enjoyable, if strange story about current events and how they change relationships and how we look at the world. Told from alternating POVs, this is a funny and tragic story that makes me curious about the author's other books.

I'm glad to have read this painfully funny and maddening book. Shteyngart invites the not quite 1% to empathize with those who have problems we can't even imagine.

“’All I know is I never had any advantages,’ Barry said. ‘I wasn’t even lucky enough to be born to immigrant parents.’”

Schteyngart’s wry new novel takes a swift kick at the funny bone of the American ruling class. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the review copy.

Barry grew up as the son of the pool guy, the man that serviced the swimming pools of the wealthy. Now between one trade and another—some of it inside, some of it legal—he has become one of the wealthiest men in Manhattan. His entitlement and vast privilege rubs up against his flimsy social conscience; meanwhile he tries to avoid coming to terms with his two-year-old son’s Autism. (When the children of the very rich are Autistic, it’s referred to as “on the Spectrum.”) His midlife crisis comes to a head when rumblings suggest he may be held accountable for his dubious business practices, and with his marriage teetering on the brink and the law breathing heavily down his collar, Barry flings himself onto a Greyhound bus and rubs elbows with the hoi polloi. Obsessed with becoming a mentor to someone with brown skin, Barry takes his rolling case of impossibly expensive wristwatches and embarks on a series of failed friendships and romances as he hurls himself due south and then west to San Diego. Who knows? Maybe he will even start an urban watch fund so that children that live in poverty can learn to appreciate fine timepieces.

Humor is a hard field for many authors. Some get stuck on a single joke, which is funny at the outset but tired by the end of an entire novel; others simply bomb, and unlike stand-up comics, the bad humor is enshrined forever in published form. So I approach humorous novels cautiously; but Schteyngart is no novice, though he is new to me, he has a good sized body of humorous work before this. The result is smooth and professional, but also original and at times laugh-out-loud funny.

The ending is brilliant.

This book will be available September 5, 2018.

My emotions were all over the place with this one! Barry and Seema have an autistic son, Shiva who is completely non-verbal. Although he has countless therapists, he appears to be on the very lowest end of the spectrum which completely frustrates Barry who is a wealthy hedge-fund manager who has little time or tolerance for his son. After a heated argument at a dinner party when Seema accuses Barry of having no imagination or soul, he leaves suddenly and boards a Greyhound bus intent on looking up an old college girlfriend. On the surface it's hard to believe a 47-yr-old man could simply abandon his wife and young son, but then you must take a step back and remember this is a satire so of course the characters are unlikable and somewhat unrealistic as the mirror is held up to society and we may not like what we see. The novel deals with so many contemporary issues: politics, racism, cultural divisiveness, infidelity, passion (and lack thereof), parenthood, wealth and poverty. With subtle humor and outrageous situations, Shteyngart weaves a tale of an embittered marriage but manages to give us a ray of hope at the end. Just what we need in this climate of unrest!

A interesting and well done read. Aside from the cover this was a good novel. I recommend this for fans of contemporary fiction.